'Downtown was a catastrophe': High River business owners take stock of ruined stores

High River Flood: Business owners take stock of ruined stores

HIGH RIVER, Alta. — High River business owners began the daunting task of cleaning up their stores Monday after officials expanded a staggered re-entry plan of the devastated town, including parts of the southwest and commercial district.

Surveying the damage and cleanup downtown, High River Mayor Emile Blokland said Monday was the first time many residents would see the full scale of the damage caused by the raging flood waters.

“It was more than a flood,” Blokland said. “That’s what we need these people to understand. The flood stopped about six hours into this, then it became a disaster.”

Throughout Monday, relief workers at a “Welcome Centre” on the High River rodeo grounds provided residents with flood information packages, bottled water, garbage bags, dust masks, cleaning supplies and teddy bears for children.

Blokland, who was seen shaking hands with residents at the centre and downtown, said an “overwhelming majority” of people are relieved the town is slowly being opened, allowing them to begin the healing process.

“It is very devastating for these folks; their livelihoods are upside down,” Blokland said. “Yet among all this destruction here you still see a lot of people with smiles going about their work and knowing there’s a day when we’re going to be open again.”

Inside the town, residents began that process among piles of destroyed belongings, portable toilets and garbage bins that lined the streets.

Downtown, business owners returned to their stores for the first time since the flood waters rushed in 11 days ago, many piling up ruined furniture and goods on the curbs of still dirty streets.

Strips of mud-caked carpets baked on sidewalks. Red danger tape wrapped around several buildings and shattered glass doors and windows. A steady breeze and passing vehicles kick up dust, and a constant stench of dirt, garbage and rotting food hung in the air.

On 3rd Avenue, Kim Miller walks through what’s left of her clothing store, Off the Hook. Almost everything in the store was destroyed or washed away.

“I really didn’t think it was going to be that bad,” Miller said. “But it’s not at all what I was expecting.”

A water mark stains one of few remaining windows, indicating flood waters reached over 1.2 metres at her store. Inches of slippery mud make walking through the space, and the cleanup, slow and difficult.

Miller figures she lost $258,000 in retail goods, and another $50,000 in shelves and counters. What was salvageable, “a couple thousand dollars” in clothing, was stuffed inside a nearby GMC SUV, with room to spare.

“Thursday [the day the flood hit] I came in, turned the computer on, changed the mannequins, put Facebook pictures up,” she recalled, her life forever changed.

Now, less than a year after moving her nine-year-old business from Okotoks to High River, Miller isn’t sure what her next step will be.

“My insurance company says that I don’t have flood insurance,” she said, as Daft Punk’s single, Get Lucky, played over a radio. “I can’t afford to reopen.”

Down the block, Kerri Kabeary, owner of Bat Sheba Gifts, shuffles through glass, bricks, and crumbled shelves and racks.

Like many in the town, Kabeary narrowly escaped the flood, rescued by a nearby store owner who pulled her to safety after she was pinned down by a retail counter.

“Honestly, I thought it was over,” she said. “You have that minute of … I know I was screaming.”

What remains of her store, mostly a few small piles of giftware, sit on the floor with shards of window glass and sections of a brick wall.

“From what I understand my counter and my till and debit machine were somewhere down the tracks,” Kabeary said. “But I don’t know what happened to it.”

“It looks like a disaster zone, but we’re lucky,” Zabloski said. “We’ll be able to get up and running before too long.”

Evelyn’s Memory Lane was hit by the flood, but not as hard as many other businesses, she said.

Most of the freezers were spared, but several of the stainless-steel refrigerators were soaked and need to be dried out an disinfected.

“The floor tiles will likely have to come up,” she said. “We could hardly put a dollar on it, but it’s so much less than what it could be.”

Blokland said more residents will be allowed to return Wednesday after the next section of the town opens, but stood behind previous decisions to prolong the mandatory evacuation.

“What these folks don’t understand is that this downtown area was a catastrophe,” he said. “Having more volunteers and more people in here would have limited our resources to clean the place up to allow them to get in here and start their own cleanups.”